How did you get to be Mexican? : a white/brown man's search for identity /
Saved in:
| Author / Creator: | Johnson, Kevin R. |
|---|---|
| Imprint: | Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1999. |
| Description: | xiii, 245 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/3661800 |
| Summary: | During an interview for a faculty position, a senior professor asked Kevin Johnson bluntly, "How did you get to be a Mexican?" And, a young woman at a Harvard Law School dinner party inquired, "Are you one of those people whose high school friends are all dead from gangs and stuff?" The son of a Mexican American mother and an Anglo father, Professor Johnson has spent his life in the borderlands between racial identities. In this insightful book, he uses his experiences as a mixed Latino Anglo to examine issues of diversity, assimilation, race relations, and affirmative action in the contemporary United States.<br> <br> <br> <br> Johnson also grew up in the borderlands between classes. He spent his childhood with his mother, first on welfare and then with a racist working-class stepfather. As an adolescent, he moved to his father's home in a predominantly upper-middle-class suburb. His educational experiences too extend from a racially mixed elementary school to an all-white high school, and from Berkeley to Harvard Law School. From this vantage point, he analyzes the intersection of race and class in the United States.<br> <br> <br> <br> This book looks not just at the question "Who is a Latino?" but also at the question of where persons of mixed Anglo-Latino heritage fit into the racial dynamics of the United States. Professor Johnson's mother was an ardent assimilationist who classified herself as "Spanish"; her failure to become a part o f middle America led her into depression and eventually mental illness. Her son has woven not just her experiences and his own, but also those of friends and relatives, into a complex and moving story of one white/brown man's search for identity. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xiii, 245 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (p. [217]-234) and index. |
| ISBN: | 1566396506 1566396514 |